i think a key thing to survival in Castevania/adjacent games is to play aggressively. standing still for too long isn’t really how you want to deal with most encounters and jump-attacking is often your friend. in CotM2, part of dealing with encounters plays a lot off of switching between characters more than past games. but overall, Zangetsu seems the best at dealing with any given situation. i’d say the key to getting better just comes from remembering stage layouts and how to deal with certain enemies/traps. it’s sort of like a fighting game, in that you need to remember “ok, best way to deal with an axe armor is to do ________” “best way to deal with bone dragons is to _______” “best way to deal with crumbling floor and medusa heads is _________” so a lot of trial and error will be involved.
anyway, also playing CotM2, albeit very slowly. been packing up my whole place and getting ready for the move at the end of the week
a thought i’ve had about CotM2 is that the bosses are arguably better than actual Castlevania bosses. most CV bosses are pretty easy to deal with if you have the right subweapons, and their movesets are pretty limited. whereas here, i feel like every boss battle, i need to be prepared to learn anywhere from four to six different patterns, which may or may not happen in a sequential order. it’s sort of a pain in the ass, but it’s probably less a waste of time.
To contribute properly to this thread (for once hah) I would like to announce that after two decades or so I may finally be enjoying a Halo game (Reach) in a way that doesn’t make me do the Six Million Dollar Man sound effect every time I press the jump button or groan at just how seriously it all takes itself, which would explain my reservations from the one time I did Halo 3 co-op for a full afternoon). Still not very clued-up on what the best weapon combo is but I generally feel safe with the semi-auto rifle and whatever-it-is those noisy, cowardly space goblins are carrying. I started out on Legendary before recognizing that my death toll -while often hilarious- wasn’t equipping me with any sort of learning curve so resorted to Heroic instead and found myself slowly becoming the Destroyer of Worlds and dying very little
Currently flying from one tall building to another while killing things along the way
My Streets of Rage 4 Mania obsession has me attacking the score so that I can get close to earning an extra life on every stage because stages 9-12 are pretty darn savage but the train boss fight is downright EVIL
I’ve been hit by too many impeccably-timed Galsia loveslaps during a 100+ combo to find this amusing but it is twistedly funny how lame their jabs sound as like they’ve just stomped a child’s Happy Meal
the thing I was working on before stopped since I lasted played (which has to have been like, 2 months ago) was full chaining stage 3, a thing I know is possible and I know how to do it but watching a combo drop after keeping it up for 3-4 minutes slowly breaks you over time
currently in the first hour & change of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
feels like playing CotM has helped me warm up to the New Castlevania aesthetic (if aesthetic is the word I want), but i’m still not liking it as much as i’d hoped
kind of want to go back to CotM and replay level 8 again- i was too frustrated to properly appreciate it the first time through
Twitch Plays ZZT happened again, this time for City of ZZT:
I, uh, apparently played the latter two thirds of it basically by myself (starting around 8:50), though I feel like half of that time was spent waiting for that stupid elevator in City Hall.
My proudest moment was the transporter room in (at 27:15).
They’re doing dungeons of ZZT, but I’m think I’m going to wait and reconsider some things about my life before joining in.
I have played through the first 4 Mega Mans now and to my childhoods sadness wow Mega Man 4 is so much weaker. Ring Man stage is cool but the weapons are mostly useless even against the bosses.
Also with the design a robot master contest they made generic levels and a wide variety of robots then kind of just threw them together. Now I am interested in 5 and 6 having more cohesion.
Finally on disc 2 of Xenogears, really seeing the budget cuts — didn’t think it would be quite so literal as a character sitting in a chair, floating in space, talking about things that happened as an image slideshow passes by. I really admire the size of the scope that the game attempts. The story is also not quite like anything I’ve encountered in a ps1 jrpg before, interested to see how or even if everything gets tied up, hoping I’ll beat it soon.
The takes I’ve heard from friends is that xenosaga attempts something similar over an even grander plot scale but fumbles it, again due to budget — and that xenoblade, albeit spatially impressive, just kinda kicks the ball along the ground in terms of plot depth and interest. Bummer! I feel like there’s so much raw 90s ENERGY in gears and it’s real neat
